


Here Comes The Sun

by henrywinter (bakkhant)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Deathfic, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Hurt JJ, Hurt Victor Nikiforov, Hurt all of them, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, Sickness, To be honest, multiple POVs, other characters are mentioned but haven't been tagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 16:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakkhant/pseuds/henrywinter
Summary: Written for YOI Catfish Prompt Party 2017, for the prompt ‘apocalypse au with it being their last day on earth!’.This...probably isn't what you wanted.





	Here Comes The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> notes to be written, I am so tired D:

**9.**

"Come on," Yuuri coaxed, clutching the spoon tighter in frustration. "Just one more mouthful."

He could see how Viktor struggled to even process his words, expression glazed with pain. The sickness was getting worse, but anyone could see that - even Yuuri. 

Three weeks ago, Viktor had collapsed in a sudden fit of coughing so violent that he could barely gasp in breath, and when he'd straightened up again, his lips had been flecked with blood. Christophe had rushed to him immediately, a fresh bottle of water in his hands; Yakov, gruff and grim, had bullied him onto taking up permanent residence on their only couch. 

And Yuuri - Yuuri, incredible, unbelievable idiot that he was, had believed Viktor when the other man had dabbed his lips clean, shaken silvery hair out of his eyes and told him with a smile that it was alright, he'd just torn his throat from coughing so hard. 

Yuuri hadn't been fooled for long, though - not when Viktor's condition had deteriorated faster than he could pretend, when the days had passed and he could no longer walk, keep himself upright, move without wincing. 

And now, Viktor wouldn't even let Yuuri help him in the only way he could. 

"Please. You didn't eat this morning, either, and you hardly touched dinner yesterday. You need to eat." Desperate enough to beg outright, almost on the verge of tears even though he wasn't the one wasting away here.

Finally, finally, Viktor relented, prying the spoon and the canned soup out of grip. His fingers - already thin to start with, and now worryingly bony - lingered over Yuuri's, rubbing the angry red indents left by the metal out of his skin.

Viktor grinned up at him, even though the effort must've cost him tremendously. "OK," he said, brightly, as Yuuri suddenly struggled to control his breathing. "But you have to feed me."

His laugh when Yuuri sputtered was faint and raspy, but no less soaked with glee.

 

**8.**

Georgi watched their antics out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to be too obvious about it. Apparently, he wasn't very successful, because JJ caught his gaze. Next thing he knew, the teenager was crossing the room to plonk himself down by Georgi's side without so much as an invitation.

"I know," JJ began abruptly, voice pitched low and earnest. Georgi narrowed his eyes at him, not really wanting to listen to whatever he was going to babble on about this time, but it didn't put JJ off. 

"I know you're worried about her," JJ continued, and Georgi's glare turned downright venomous. Unfortunately, JJ must get that a lot, because he seemed immune to shame. 

"I miss her too. Isabella, I mean. You know, my fiancée."

Yes, as a matter of fact, Georgi did know who Isabella was - if only because JJ had grabbed everyone and asked frantically after her when he'd first arrived (bringing only a guitar and his overly-loud personality, and nothing useful besides). 

Was this all leading up to a dig at Georgi? Yuri certainly took every opportunity to accuse him of sulking over something he didn't actually have; Georgi didn't expect that brat to understand his feelings for Anya anyway, however unrequited. 

It wasn't. "I haven't been able to get in contact with her since all of this started," JJ confessed, pitching his voice a bit lower, doing a horrendous job of papering over his upset.

Georgi wasn't going to be the one to reassure him, but he did let the annoying teen sit near him for the rest of the evening. 

 

**7.**

Things were bad. Yakov ran a weary palm over his face, and fancied that he could feel the wrinkles multiply by the minute. 

They were bad a long time ago, when the world first started burning, whole cities at a time. When people had taken to the streets, milling around like so many animals, confused, panicked, and increasingly, savage. 

They'd been lucky to find this place: situated just far enough from the motorway that they hadn't been attacked, yet, and - a month and a half ago, at least - stocked like a little corner of Heaven, a blessing, with canned food in the basement and tools in the garage. 

But now there were nine of them crammed together, all hungry, none suited to fending for themselves. They'd almost picked the basement clean of food, though only Yakov and Lilia knew that for sure, since they were the ones who ferried up the increasingly thin meals to everyone else. And none of them had the first idea how they were going to weather the coming winter.

Which wasn't surprising, considering that some of their number were honest-to-God children. Yakov wished that to say that rest were hardly any better was a mere testament to his age, but. He scanned the living room. 

There were Yuuri and Viktor, the latter of whom was unlikely, Yakov admitted to himself with a pang, to last another fortnight. There was Lilia, stern and commanding and the most competent out of all the them, which wasn't actually saying very much. There was Christophe, who knew more about modelling than scouring for food, or fortifying the house. And then there was Georgi, who - well, was Georgi.

Yakov turned his eyes back to his pitiful ration - a single can of soup, like everyone else's. Even the children, even Viktor, who badly needed both nourishment and medicine for his tortured body, and was getting neither. Mila and Seung-gil had gone out to see if they could gather supplies, or otherwise scrounge up anything useful; more than a week later, Yakov thought it safe to say that they weren't coming back (and nor were the torches, clean bottled water and energy bars they'd packed).

That last part was too callous for even Yakov to voice aloud, and in any case, it would probably be dangerous to shatter the strained tension in the small house. 

He grimaced over to Lilia, who put down her soup with impeccable poise, and thinned her lips in response. 

 

**6.**

"God, I want to get out of here," Yuri griped, drumming his heels against the top of the coffee table. His trainers were filthy enough to leave scuff marks against the surface; he hadn't taken them off in a ridiculously long time, not even to sleep, in case they needed to run at a moment’s notice. "I'm fucking bored."

Otabek gave him a look of infinite patience and infinite...unimpressed-ness. 

"Maybe if 'getting out' wasn't sure to kill us," his friend said, dryly.

"The idiot old man's only sick because he spent so long looking for Katsudon," Yuri tried for the thousandth time, more a token protest than anything. Then, when Otabek only raised his eyebrows in silence, "Ugh."

He wasn't kidding, though, when he complained to Otabek sometimes - alright, a bit more frequently than sometimes - that he felt like he was dying faster cooped up inside than he would inhaling poisonous air. At least he'd feel - freer, then. He wanted to run, spin, move. Instead, he could hardly take a piss in this shitty little house without tripping over three other people on the way, and he couldn't even open a window, because Yakov had duct-taped the edges on their second day here. 

He wanted to punch something - a window, the pile of cushions in the corner where he slept because there weren't enough beds, that irritating loudmouth Canadian. 

Who wouldn’t stop looking at Yuri, at all of them, when he thought they weren’t looking. All droopy shoulders and grey puppy-eyes, though that's easy to forget when he was running his stupid mouth eighty miles a minute, or laughing that obnoxious laugh. 

Like now, for example. JJ must've felt the force of the sheer hatred in Yuri's gaze, because he chose this moment to look up, and send him an exaggerated wink. Yuri stuck his middle finger up at him in return, scowling. How anyone ever wanted that for a fiancée was beyond him.

Beside him, Otabek snickered quietly.

 

**5.**

None of them liked him, JJ has realised. 

Yakov and Lilia were old, and stern, and seemed to prefer to play the part of the parents of the group, which was understandable, though his own parents (they'd been on a trip to the countryside when everything went down, so they're probably safe, please God let them be safe) certainly never shouted so vigorously. 

Yuuri, the Japanese one who sent out waves of second-hand stress, was always nice, but he was always too preoccupied with Viktor to really talk to. And anyway, he was JJ. He didn't need anyone being nice to him.

He wished Christophe and Georgi would be a little less distant, though. JJ was beginning to doubt anything could shake the gloomy Russian from his stony-faced brooding, and - not that he ever gave up, he wouldn't be himself if he did - it was always disheartening that all Christophe ever offered him was a distant half-smile.

Otabek he got on with the best out of all of them, but he was a lost cause, never more than five paces apart from Yuri, who hated JJ with a baffling intensity. He could understand that his personality rubbed some people the wrong way, but he wasn't sure what he'd done to incite such genuine loathing. 

Sure, the small Russian (and here 'small' meant compact, packed tight with gunpowder, liable to flare into fury at any time) snapped at everybody, but he was markedly more volatile around JJ. It wasn't even like JJ was any more useless than Yuri, with his guitar - Yuri might keep a pocket knife under his pillow and another strapped to his ankle, but JJ had overheard him confessing to Otabek once that actually, the most experience he's had with them was watching his grandfather skin a rabbit that one time they went hunting

Oh, well. It was more than fine. He was JJ.

 

**4.**

The children were fighting again, Lilia thought with some disapproval. She should intervene: no fifteen-year-old should be allowed to be so rude.

Still, equally, no fifteen-year-old should have to be here in the first place, so she let it slide. She'd do better to conserve her energy anyway, though what for, she was becoming increasingly less certain. She went down to the basement every day: she's seen how rapidly their stock of food has diminished, how their supply of bottled water was also running short. 

They should've moved out long ago, headed south perhaps, where it would be warmer, but they'd left it too late. Not that they would've survived the journey anyway. None of them would have had the first clue how to defend themselves, when they inevitably ran across the gangs that prowled the streets, profiting from the lawlessness, and Viktor was just another dead weight.

The rest of them would all join him soon enough; all that was left was to sit still and wait to die.

The one bit of breathing room, the one thread of humour to all this, was her ex-husband. Of course Yakov would be here with her, at the end of the world, heavy-jawed and grouchy and just as soft-hearted inside as he always was. Of course.

Thank God there was someone who already understood her implicitly to keep her company; thank God she hadn't been alone when, rooting around the garage, they'd come across the five litres of antifreeze, bright blue and sealed tight.

She'd made a life of prioritising strict personal discipline above all, but even she wouldn't have been able to make the decision alone.

 

**3.**

Something was up, and Christophe didn't just mean this whole bizarre situation, waiting for the end of the world to catch up to its last survivors. 

It truly felt like the nine of them were the only ones left, most of the time, though he knew for sure that there are plenty of people around who make setting foot outside deadly. The only sane ones left, then, which really was saying something considering the sorry gaggle of them, Yuuri half-out of his mind fretting over Viktor, Georgi sighing constantly into the stale air, the teenagers a hair-trigger away from breaking into a fistfight. 

And himself - too dejected, too lethargic, to muster up his old enthusiasm, or hold a conversation on his own. If only Viktor hadn't gotten himself sick, and diverted all of Katsuki's attention to boot - Christophe had always been much better at chasing after people.

That didn't mean he was blind, though. He could see the suspicious glances Yakov and Lilia had been exchanging of late, the way Yakov hunched and Lilia fixed her spine straighter under the weight of some new burden.

He didn't envy them. 

 

**2.**

For all that Yuri spit and cursed his displeasure, which was a lot, he never once complained about their misfortune that this is happening at all, or that Yakov and Lilia had been pushing their breakfast later and later every day until they'd ended up getting used to only two meals per day, or that the energy bars tasted like processed cardboard.

Otabek admired that in him. He might be older, outwardly more calm, but didn't have anywhere near Yuri's toughness, his spirit that could push through anything the world dared to throw at him. 

More and more often, Otabek thought that Yuri's strength of will was sustaining the both of them. He was almost certain that on his own, he would have broken down long ago, beat his fists against the floorboards at the injustice of it all, driven himself mad with thoughts of his family back in Kazakhstan. 

"Say something," Yuri broke into his thoughts, impatient like he had somewhere to be. "I hate it when you go all silent for ages like that. What am I meant to do, talk to these other losers?

Otabek suppressed an uncharitable smile, and let himself be carried forwards by Yuri's momentum.

 

**1.**

"I know what you're doing," Yuuri hissed down at him, hands trembling around the energy bar and the half-bottle of water.   

Viktor didn't reply, avoiding the accusation, or drained from the effort of staying alive, of breathing past the storm of coughing that had lasted most of an hour earlier today; Yuuri wasn't having any of it.

"I know why you're not eating," he pressed on, insistent, hurt mixed with pale-faced anger. "I fucking know that you think - you think you won't need it anyway, and that I should have it instead, isn't that right?

Shaking the energy bar in Viktor's face didn't elicit much more than a slow crease of his brows, a slow exhale. The others were staring, Yuuri knew, but he didn't care.

"I don't want that," Yuuri all but shouted at Viktor's prone form, the pained concentration in his face, his frown, his clenched muscles, "do you hear me? You brought me here, and now I'm safe, and you're - I don't want that, I never said I wanted that, _Viktor-_ "

Viktor only frowned harder, shook his head minutely. 

"Fuck you," Yuuri breathed, crouching lower to press his forehead against the edge of the couch. It did nothing to hide the sob in his voice. "Fuck you, Viktor."

 

**10.**

None of them could sleep after that, except perhaps Viktor, who skirted the border between waking and unconsciousness at the best of times. Yuri was bouncing his leg up and down in his corner while flicking irritably through the cheap paperback they all practically knew by heart by now, a restlessness reflected in the tightness around Christophe's mouth, Georgi's stiff posture

No different, really, from any of the other nights they'd spent under this too-small roof, Lilia thought, and no less unbearable. 

A nudge to the side was all it took for Yakov to sit up, snapping his gaze to her face, the firm set of her expression. 

"Fine," he sighed, bypassing - to his credit, and Lilia was grateful for it - any protest and bargaining. Then, clearing his throat so the whole room could hear him, "We aren't going to sleep anytime soon at this rate. Do any of you want hot chocolate?"

The effect was instantaneous. 

Georgi jerked his head up in disbelief; Yuuri scrutinised their faces for any hint of a lie, a gleam in his eye that hadn't been there since Viktor had folded in on himself, fighting for breath; Yuri, tightly-coiled spring that he was, chucked his book aside and jumped to his feet.

"Hey," JJ exclaimed, all exhilaration and no accusation, "you've been holding out on us!"

Lilia sniffed at that. "It's a luxury," she explained, with some haughtiness. It was half a tin of Cadbury's, actually, expiring in a little over a month. "For special occasions. We should not waste it."

She didn't miss Yuri's eye-roll, but fortunately, none of them question what was so special about tonight. Turning down JJ's offer of help, she went out of the room - abuzz with excited chatter, for once - with Yakov. She could make out Yuuri's voice, telling Viktor about a sleepover he'd forgotten about till now.

They were a bit more subdued when they return, but perked up instantly at the sight of the tray of steaming mugs. She and Yakov gestured for them all to gather around Viktor's couch, and distributed the drinks to grins and murmured gratitude. 

Yakov glanced round. "JJ, you could get out your guitar."

JJ leapt up, surprise giving way to eager delight, almost knocking over his hot chocolate. Only Otabek's reflexes averted the disaster

"Idiot," Yuri grumbled under his breath, but sounded almost fond. He blew at his drink to cover it up, taking a tentative sip. "Huh, it's sweet."

Lilia waited for JJ to return and settle the guitar in place across his knee before raising her mug. 

"To us," she said, looking around, looking directly at Yakov. Yakov held her gaze, nodded solemnly. 

"To us," the rest of them echoed, and drank.

**Author's Note:**

> I...am only slightly sorry :D
> 
> I feed on comments, kudos, and the souls of newborn babes :) :)
> 
> Tell me what you liked, tell me what you hated, tell me how I should improve. Please.


End file.
